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Are you seeing specific pages instantly lose conversion, or is it a site wide estimation?

If it's a site wide issue, then I would take a look at the individual landing pages.

If you are targeting the right terms, my thought would be to start working on conversion testing.  Here are a few thoughts:

- How aggressive is the marketing funnel?  Is there re-targeting, shopping cart abandonment follow ups, etc.

• Start surveying customers to find out why they are not buying

• Proactive live chat

• Is the call to action correct?  Pricing?  Value Added Benefits?

If it's just one specific page that all the sudden magically seems like it lost the conversion once you started plowing traffic to it...Then, I would start to try and figure out "what is the difference between the keywords"?  There must be a different customer intent, or a different type of customer coming to the page if it all of a sudden starts tanking.

Another rudimentary website for this purpose would be alexa.com.  Only gives you the top 10, but I'm not really sure exactly how reliable it is.

I think EGOL pretty much hit it on the head.  You need to figure out the intent of the terms you have.  If you break down the typical customer buying process:

1. **Awareness. **Your potential customers don’t know you exist. You need to reach them with your brand to get their consideration.
2. **Interest. **Your prospects are aware of you and might be receptive to your offers and ads.
3. **Research. **Potential customers not only know you exist but have shown an interest in learning more about you.
4. **Buying. **These people have a good idea about you and have browsed around to figure out exactly what they want. They are ready to buy buy buy!

Say your niche product is "mountain bikes".  If you are seeing an uptick in terms like "how to ride a mountain bike", "riding mountain bikes", "fixing mountain bikes", "fastest mountain bike racing times", you should expect to see a smaller conversion rate - assuming you are selling a product.  These wouldn't be considered "buying" terms.  Same thing as "mountain bike reviews" - that's more of a 'research' term.

If your goal is to collect email addresses, then maybe your 'sell' on why they should give you their email address doesn't make sense for the terms.

If you are seeing a dip in conversions, I would take a look at the highest trafficked terms that are not converting and see if there are other ways to 'make' them convert.  Landing page modification here would be key.

Have you tried looking at the SEOMoz recommend companies page here: http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended#link-building ?

I'm sure you are also looking for other references too - but this may be a good place to start.

Hello,

I'm having a little bit of a conundrum, and I'm hoping someone will be able to help!

We have an ecommerce site, and were trying to figure out what is the most SEO friendly way to handle product titles.  With our ecommerce software, it currently sets the Product title as the H1 tag (which could be changed if needed).  In addition, the product title is what is used as anchor text for any built in links that the ecommerce software builds from the category pages, etc (just like any other ecommerce site).  Here's where I'm stuck.  I'm trying to determine if it makes sense to use the specific keyword we are aiming for as the product title, or to put variations of the title that would be more descriptive.  Here is an example:

We have a Wizard of Oz Dorothy Deluxe Girls Shoes.  According to all accounts, the best keyword to attack for this would be "dorothy shoes".  However, it loses the more accurate description of "Wizard of Oz Dorothy Deluxe Girl Shoes".  But, my thinking is that the H1 tag and anchor text would make more sense to use the term "Dorothy Shoes".

The title tag could go something like this: "Wizard of Oz Dorothy Deluxe Girls Shoes | Dorothy Shoes"

In a situation like this, what do you think would be the "best" way to handle the title tag, product name, H1 tag, and anchor text?  I'm sure there will be many different opinions, so I would like to hear what you think is best - and why.

Have you tried looking at the SEOMoz recommend companies page here: http://www.seomoz.org/article/recommended#link-building ?

I'm sure you are also looking for other references too - but this may be a good place to start.

I think EGOL pretty much hit it on the head.  You need to figure out the intent of the terms you have.  If you break down the typical customer buying process:

1. **Awareness. **Your potential customers don’t know you exist. You need to reach them with your brand to get their consideration.
2. **Interest. **Your prospects are aware of you and might be receptive to your offers and ads.
3. **Research. **Potential customers not only know you exist but have shown an interest in learning more about you.
4. **Buying. **These people have a good idea about you and have browsed around to figure out exactly what they want. They are ready to buy buy buy!

Say your niche product is "mountain bikes".  If you are seeing an uptick in terms like "how to ride a mountain bike", "riding mountain bikes", "fixing mountain bikes", "fastest mountain bike racing times", you should expect to see a smaller conversion rate - assuming you are selling a product.  These wouldn't be considered "buying" terms.  Same thing as "mountain bike reviews" - that's more of a 'research' term.

If your goal is to collect email addresses, then maybe your 'sell' on why they should give you their email address doesn't make sense for the terms.

If you are seeing a dip in conversions, I would take a look at the highest trafficked terms that are not converting and see if there are other ways to 'make' them convert.  Landing page modification here would be key.